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Automic Automation vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Automic Automation
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (3rd)
VMware Aria Automation
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
170
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (1st), Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Automic Automation and VMware Aria Automation aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Automic Automation is designed for Workload Automation and holds a mindshare of 7.4%, up 6.0% compared to last year.
VMware Aria Automation, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Management, holds 11.1% mindshare, down 12.2% since last year.
Workload Automation
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Peter Grundler - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to move away from manual tasks and offers wide platform support and web-based interface
Customers want to move away from manual monitoring and checking processes. Automating these processes helps in time-saving and reduces human error. When you automate business processes, it reduces mistakes. It eliminates the risk of manual errors such as typos. There is a 20% to 30% reduction in human error. It fulfills all the needs when it comes to visibility and control across various operating platforms. It is the perfect product for managing processes that span multiple operating platforms. Automic Automation has the widest platform support compared to other products, such as Control-M, Tivoli from IBM, or Stonebranch. It definitely helps with compliance processes. We have had a lot of customers for two years with a focus on compliance, and it works. They were successful. Due to the fact that our customers can automate a lot of things, it reduces operating costs. It is hard to give a number because the savings are different for each customer. If a customer never had any automation, there could be about 80% savings after implementing Automic Automation, whereas for a customer who already has automated tasks, the difference will be less by adding Automic Automation. They might see 5% to 10% more savings. Automic Automation helps improve our ability to meet SLAs. In the recent versions, SLA management has been integrated, which previously was an external component. Because a lot of customers used it and asked Broadcom to implement SLA management into the workload engine, Broadcom included it. We see more and more customers running their SLA management via the Automic Automation product.
Le Quang Long - PeerSpot reviewer
Significantly streamlined operations with good automation that helps with simplifying workflows
It helps me build a big catalog and provide it to my end users. It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method. I do not meet many people to operate it live beforehand. It operates for both of my products, but as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"What I like the most about Automic is its user interface."
"The workflow allows us to integrate multiple applications into one flow and come up with a business result."
"We impose some standards for backup and restore operations."
"People are called back five minutes after I establish a ticket or incident. They are often doing WebEx and web sessions to get to the point."
"Automic Automation is a highly complex yet versatile tool."
"It's a scheduling tool on steroids. We can have a job run at certain times. If it fails, reset it a number of times and then send an e-mail. Send e-mails on any type of event. Calendar creation, schedule things on certain days, year-end stuff, period end. It's endless, really."
"We automate very manual, robust tasks, which are very time consuming and not error-free."
"Compared to other products, the stability is remarkable."
"Instead of only deploying templates, we can deploy blueprints which are easier on day-to-day operations."
"I can make a blueprint with an Active Directory deployment. With everything prepared, people can start installing our products."
"The most valuable feature of VMware Aria Automation is the versatile automation and deployments."
"It allows some of the tenants to self-provision their machines, so they don't have to wait for us to create the machine for them."
"We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CIS values for each server."
"The most valuable feature is the portal where you can assign permissions to specific people to request specific items in the catalog and allow them to provision things for themselves. Or it enables them to request different services that you can create through vRO and vRA."
"It has saved us a lot of time and work. It helped us to reorganize some of our service lines, so we could be more efficient. For example, on our open system server team, we had 15 people building servers, now we have two."
"The most valuable features are the metrics and reporting aspects. The historical data and extraction enable us to tell where the trends are and where contentions may exist in the future."
 

Cons

"Content of file transfers cannot be searched by the system, but has to be done by the user interface. This is not good, as it has been erased often."
"The support has declined somewhat over the years due to various takeovers. It's not as personal as it used to be."
"The SSH agent is missing in version 12.1. Maybe it would be a good addition to see on the web client of the next version of Atomic."
"The one big issue that we have is around passwords and not being able to update passwords through a different tool. This is not available yet."
"There has to be a better way to visualize things in the application without having so many windows open."
"We can't migrate the users from one master to another master or product to product. We have to do it manually."
"I would like more training on workload automation, because I do not have a complete insight of the product yet."
"When you want to use the entirety of Automic, it is heavy."
"One of the features that's a struggle today is some of the public cloud extensibility. Some of the plugins that are native to vRA and vRO, I'd like to see them come out earlier for vRO. I understand that in vRA, the plugins are a little bit more polished because the VRA is the GUI. But we'd like to see them released earlier in vRO, prior to a GUI being released. Azure, for example, is a public cloud provider but we have some instability issues with the plugin in vRO. It's okay for us if we separate the vRA from vRO plugin releases. So I'd like to see some increased stability in some of those public cloud plugins."
"The integration is a bit tight. I need the right package to use it properly. The new automation processes for VMware are messy, and support could be better."
"Deploying and configuring the solution takes a lot of time."
"The upgrade experience is horrible. It's not straightforward, there are a lot of failures, a lot of support interactions. It's not something that we are able to pull off ourselves. I've been with vRA since it was termed vCSA. We've gone through multiple rounds, and it has never been easy."
"The initial setup is very complex because we have a bunch of customization workflows. They were built-in features that we had to program as code with Orchestration."
"With the workflow aspect, which has manual intervention, a policy needs to be approved by somebody. There could be better management of that piece with better templates. It is like a workflow engine, but does not have enough example templates to do certain things. A lot of people waste a lot of time trying to figure out the same thing, and everybody is trying to figure out the same thing, e.g., how to make a MySQL cluster in a Windows environment?"
"I think they could probably do more if they created more actions and more use cases to automate things."
"I would like to see better integration capabilities. Maybe if they could develop libraries within Aria Automation for simpler integration with other third-party solutions, instead of just basic integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution seems expensive to me, but it does the job well."
"It costs too much. That's why we are now looking at other products."
"We came to a very good deal, but it took us three years to finalize."
"Initially, the pricing was competitive but consistently, year over year, its pricing has become more erratic. It increases to the point where even with the positives, it starts to become a longer-term question about how it will fit into the environment."
"They have increased the license price a little bit. It is more than what we expected about two years ago. So, there could be some surprises when it comes to pricing."
"We cannot use all the functions because they are too expensive."
"The cost of arrays is high. If you want to buy an array for an application, and see value from it, you need about half a million dollars. That is too expensive."
"Broadcom has recently changed its licensing model. I do not deal with pricing, but from what I heard from customers is that due to the increased pricing, some of them are thinking of reducing tasks in Automic to have fewer executions. Others are thinking of replacing Automic Automation."
"Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
"It is pricey for what you get."
"There is confusion between licensing levels. There are three different licensed versions of vRealize Automation, and there are different things which can happen in each of them."
"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market."
"I'm very interested in the integration with Puppet. However, my organization doesn't have the funding for something like Puppet right now. If VMware would integrate that feature set (Puppet) into vRA. That would be very awesome."
"We have seen significant ROI. We used to have physical servers, it took 90 days to get a server, order it, buy it, and get it in. We have it down to 10 minutes, building a server with virtualization, and now that's too slow. So, we let the customer do it at their speed. Therefore, it is pretty much up in a couple of minutes and they have a server."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Automic Workload Automation?
It is easy to manage complex workloads and use electronic workflow automation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Automic Workload Automation?
The pricing model for Automic has changed from a host-based licensing model to one based on successful execution. I still prefer the earlier licensing model, but I understand that it was likely cha...
What needs improvement with Automic Workload Automation?
There are certain areas in Automic that need improvement, such as the complexity of workflow dependencies. When you have workflows within workflows, it can become complicated. The existing options ...
What's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?
vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...
Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?
When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...
Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?
I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...
 

Also Known As

Automic Dollar Universe
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Adidas, 84.51, ESB
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Redwood Software, Broadcom and others in Workload Automation. Updated: February 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.